Can You Say Happy Birthday Twitter in 280 Characters or Fewer?

“Just Setting Up My Twttr”

“Just setting up my twttr,” time-stamped 3:50 pm on March 21, 2006, by co-founder Jack Dorsey was the first tweet ever. Happy Birthday, Twitter.

Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams founded Twitter. It first gained widespread attention as a news source in January 2009 when it reported the crash of US Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River in New York just minutes after it splashed down. 

It gave Twitter instant credibility.

“There’s a plane in the Hudson,” tweeted Janis Krums from a ferry on the Hudson. “I’m on the ferry to pick up the people. Crazy.”

217 Million and Counting

Twitter went public and issued its IPO on November 13, 2013, at $26 per share (TWTR). By the end of the day, the price was $44.90. As of March 21, its stock price is $37.60. It generates revenue through advertising and data licensing and features Follower Ads, Promoted Ads, and Trend Takeovers.

Twitter has as many as 400 million visitors worldwide, although numbers vary from source to source. Many people visit without ever logging in or having an account. 

According to Twitter’s Q4 2021 Earnings Highlights, revenue was $1.57 billion with ad revenue at $1.41 billion, both up 22 percent over 2020. It claims 217 million daily users (average monetizable DAU), including 38 million in the United States.

The Fewest Produce the Most

The Pew Research Center surveyed U.S. adults on Twitter last year. Forty-six percent say Twitter has increased their understanding of world events, but 33 percent feel much of the information is misleading or inaccurate. 

The survey also revealed that, like all social media outlets, a small number of users produce the majority of content. From June 12 to September 12, 2021, the survey found the most active 25 percent of those adults made 97 percent of all tweets in the survey.

Pew also divulged that only 14 percent of tweets by the most active users were original content, 49 percent were retweets, and 33 percent replies to other users. The most active users also received the least engagement from other users.

K-pop is King

As for Twitter stardom, Korean Popular Music (K-pop) is king with 7.8 billion global tweets in 2021. As for individuals, according to Trackalytics.com, Barack Obama has the most followers as of March 2022, with more than 130 million.

Share Status Updates Via SMS

Twitter was a separate project for the audio-video company Odeo. Evan Williams and Noah Glass owned it. Williams previously founded Blogger and sold it to Google in 2003.

When Odeo’s business faltered from the weight of competition, Williams asked a small team of employees to develop other ways to utilize their technology. Jack Dorsey, one of the young engineers, came up with the idea for a platform for users to share status updates via SMS. They had the system and logo developed by March 2006, inspired by the sounds of birds.

Its hook has always been the posts’ immediacy and the economy of words. It quickly gained a reputation for a hangout for gossip but has evolved into one of the most viable sources of immediate information on the World Wide Web.

Happy Birthday, Twitter! We went beyond 280 characters, but please follow the links below to our Twitter page and other social media outlets.